Order of the Samurai
by Shot Knight
Summary: An Americanization of Shinkenger's origin. When Toby Richards breaks the seal on a curse he releases monsters into the world! Now the only person that can defeat them is the spirit samurai Aka...using Toby as a host to transform into the Samurai of Fire!


So, this is a little fan project I'm also posting on Rangerboard that I've been mulling over lately. It's an American adaptation of Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, the newest Super Sentai, and it features a lot of samurai stuff. Being a lover of both samurai and Sentai, I decided to pay it homage in a way that Disney never will. This will be a three part story, retelling the Shinkenger origin. I can't do a full-fledged adaptation due to other commitments like my PKM Ranger story, but hopefully this will be a fun, quick read for people.

* * *

**Part One- The Scoundrel and the Samurai**

"Come on, Toby. Aren't you excited about this?"

It was difficult for Toby to look his teacher in the eye. She was old and her many wrinkles seemed to be the only things holding her together. He regretted anew his decision to board the bus last, little knowing that it would leave him stranded next to her. He sighed and nodded his head reluctantly, before returning to the far more interesting background of the city around them.

Judging from his watch, they'd been on the road for about ten minutes. Eight of those minutes had been spent in traffic waiting for the idiot drivers to properly drive their cars. It seemed that just when they might move, the light would change to red and they'd be stranded. He had to wait for another three minutes before finally the bus managed to inch past the light and continue along its way.

"After all, we're going to the Asian Historical Museum today. Don't you like that stuff?" The teacher was only guessing based on his outfit, his shirt had some kind of foreign character drawn on it, and it definitely looked Asian.

He didn't look back at her, he didn't think he could do it one more time. "Yeah, but it's definitely more fun to do things with people you like." It was difficult for the teacher to make out what he said, as he mumbled so much, but she assumed it was pleasant and continued to smile.

"Ooh, we're here!" she said excitedly and waited for the driver to stop the bus in front of the museum. She got up and stood in the aisle.

At first, no one noticed her. The students were much too busy talking amongst themselves and horsing around. She had to clear her throat three times before the bus finally settled down and paid attention to her, and even then they were only half-listening in between their headsets and their phones.

"Alright everyone," said the teacher, aided by the bus driver's microphone. Her voice blared through the bus. "Keep in a single file line when we get to the museum and try not to break anything this time." She gave a discouraging look towards the back of the bus. "Izzy, that means you."

The person in question, Izzy, looked up from the game he was playing. "Got it, Mrs. K. No bumping into security cases this time." He snapped off a salute and returned to his game.

Mrs. Kerry sighed. "Mary, would you please keep an eye on him?"

The girl sitting next to Izzy nodded. "Sure thing, Mrs. Kerry," she said and gently smacked Izzy on the back of his head.

Izzy pretended to rub his head and groaned. "Was that really needed, baby?" He responded by tickling her.

"Ah! S-Stop it!"

"Behave!" Mrs. Kerry's voice prompted the two of them to sit up straight and politely in their seats. "Is everyone ready?" Most of the class nodded, though they hadn't been in the bus for very long they were getting a little cramped. "Then let's go."

Following Toby the class descended off the bus and towards the museum. Toby glanced around, there were about a million things around him he'd rather be doing. There was an ice cream store just around the corner he would have loved to just bolt for but he couldn't. Not yet anyway. He needed to wait until the class got inside the museum and dispersed. Then he could do whatever he wanted.

He bumped into one of the other students on the way in, a shorter punk with glasses. "What're you looking at?" Toby asked.

"You're the new kid, aren't you?" he asked.

Toby shrugged. "Guess so. Unless someone else got here in between the first bell at school and the bus ride."

The other boy put out his hand. "I'm Aaron," he said. "What's your name?"

"Herbert Franklin," Toby said and ignored Aaron's hand. "Quit buggin' me. We're supposed to be learning something here."

"Nobody ever learns stuff on field trips anyway," Aaron said. "If we broke tradition now it'd just be weird."

Toby snickered, the first time all day that he'd offered something even close to a smile. "Gotta hand it to ya, that's one of the few intelligent things I've heard all day."

"So you had to sit with Mrs. K?"

Toby nodded. "That was annoying. I think she's older than some of the stuff we're supposed to see here."

Aaron laughed. "Wouldn't say that, but she's definitely an acquired taste."

Mrs. Kerry looked back at them. "You boys say something? Aaron? Toby?"

"Nope," they both said at once. She knowingly turned her head back to the very important job of guiding the class up the steps to the museum.

"I can already smell the dust from the stuff in there," said Toby. "Couldn't we just Google the stuff at the school? There's air conditioning there."

"I'm pretty sure there's air conditioning in there too, Herbert."

Toby grinned. "Funny name, right?"

Aaron grinned back. "Yep."

"Are you two lovebirds done?" asked a voice behind them. They turned together to see a rather tall girl, but not quite as tall as them, with her hands on her hips. "Come on, you're holding up the line. Some of us actually do want to see some of the stuff here, believe it or not."

"Guess we found the stereotypical artsy girl," said Toby.

"That's Erica," said Aaron. "We should probably do what she wants."

Toby stopped moving and Erica bumped into him. "Adorable." He laughed and walked into the museum. Erica fumed and Aaron looked worried.

"I don't know if that was such a good idea, Toby." Aaron followed him into the museum where Mrs. Kerry was gathering everyone into a circle around her.

"Who cares? Once the teacher blows the whistle I'm outta here."

"Don't you want to see the exhibits and stuff?" Aaron asked. "There's supposed to be some kind of foreign thing from Japan. All of these cool artifacts and jewels."

"Think we can steal some of them?"

Aaron chuckled. "I don't think so."

Toby shrugged. "Too bad. Could've been fun too."

They hadn't even listened to Mrs. Kerry's announcement, but they were pretty sure they'd heard something like it before. Once the class started dispersing, Toby said, "Come on. Let's check out the thing and then bail. I wanna check out that ice cream shop." The two of them headed down the corridor.

"So, where'd you transfer from anyway?" asked Aaron. "You didn't say much when you introduced yourself in class."

"Somewhere out of state, I didn't really like it there. They didn't like it when I set fire to a school building."

"Y-You did what?"

"Not my fault, really. The chemistry teacher wasn't really specific about how the chemicals were supposed to be combined. I just wanted to see what colors I could make."

"Did you get suspended?"

Toby grinned. "Nope, expelled. That's why I got sent to this place."

Aaron laughed, but the seriousness of the statement combined with Toby's grin made him unsure if Toby was kidding or not. He decided not to ask any more questions and just followed Toby down the corridor to the foreign exhibit.

Most of the class hadn't gotten there yet and the room was mostly empty. Toby spotted one security guard in the corner snoozing and a few old people standing around checking out the stuff.

"Not very crowded, huh?" said Aaron.

"It's a weekday," said Toby. "Most people are at work or school. Just the old farts and a few guys to make sure nobody swipes the garbage."

"Makes sense. What is it, anyway?"

Toby shrugged. "How should I know? Do I look like a psychic?" He and Aaron glanced at the cases, wondering what exactly was inside.

They were weird, that was for sure. A bunch of stones in different colors stood inside the cases and back at Toby and Aaron. They seemed to be about samurai and some kind of monsters.

"Those things look like sushi," said Toby and pointed at the weird things the samurai were fighting.

"Little bit, yeah." Aaron nodded in agreement. "You like sushi?"

Toby made an ugly face. "No, I do not."

Toby looked around. "Wow, dude…" He turned and pointed to the big stone at the edge of the room. "What is that?"

The stone tablet he was referring to was truly massive, easily ten feet tall and granite. As the two walked toward the velvet rope that divided it from the rest of the room, they noticed strange characters etched into its surface, along with similar images from the strangely-colored rocks. The samurai and the sushi men were here too.

"This is neat," Aaron agreed. "Who made this?"

Toby lowered himself to check out the tablet's plaque. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a set of glasses to read. "Says it was made in the sixteen-hundreds by some dude named Aka. Lame name."

"What's it mean?"

"Like I'd know that. Come on, we should get going. That ice cream ain't gonna eat itself." They were about to head out when, quite suddenly, Toby found himself way too close to one of the elderly people who were also checking out the exhibit. Toby inhaled, it smelled like some kind of animal rescue.

"Pardon me, young man," the old lady said, kindly.

"Practicing spooking people, huh?" Toby asked. "You're not dead yet."

Aaron just barely managed to hold in his laughter, but the old lady was far from amused. "How dare you?" she screeched and jammed her cane into Toby's sandals.

Blistering pain shot through his body and, quite accidentally, Toby tripped over the velvet rope and smashed into the tablet hard. The tablet, which had seemed so secure and stable, teetered precariously then suddenly fell to the ground, shattering.

The noise awoke the guard on duty who, upon seeing the broken tablet, began jumping wildly and screaming his lungs out. Toby found it hard to be intimidated by someone a foot shorter than he was.

"Who did this!" the guard demanded to know, his eyes narrowing on Toby. The guard's nostrils flared and he reached for his club. "Was it you, punk?"

"Let's think about it," said Toby. "I'm standing in the rubble where this junk used to be so, yeah, I might have tripped into it because this old broad thought she could jam her cane at me and break my toe."

The old lady huffed and left before she could be charged with anything, leaving just Aaron and Toby alone in the room with the short guard.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" the guard screeched. His face had turned an unhealthy shade of red. "This was priceless! I'm going to be in so much trouble because of you! What's your name, punk? I'm going to have to report you."

Toby stepped out of the rubble and leaned against the wall, rubbing his toe. "Toby Richards," he said. "Anything else?"

The guard looked like he was about to say something, but clamped his mouth shut. His facial expression changed, from shock and anger to just shock, with a bit of horror mixed in.

"What's wrong?" Toby asked. "Cat got your tongue?"

"Uh, Toby, might want to move," said Aaron. He had a similar expression on his face.

"What's wrong?" Toby turned to where they sere staring, the pile of rubble that had once been a big, shiny tablet. "Oh, that's what's wrong."

Where the tablet had once been there was indeed a pile of rubble, but for some reason a red hand had emerged from inside the tablet. It was flailing wildly, trying desperately to escape from wherever it had come from. As it pulled itself out Toby noticed that the strange little creature had on weird samurai clothes, kind of like the sushi monsters from the other parts of the display.

"That doesn't look good," said Toby. He eyed the monster's odd-looking sword, it seemed to be made out of plastic, but from the gleam on its edge Toby could tell it was quite real and quite deadly.

The monster looked around, from Aaron to the guard to finally Toby, before it let out a strange, earth-wrenching screech in a language Toby didn't understand. It turned towards Toby and swung its sword, screeching all the while.

Toby did what anyone would have done, and ducked immediately. The sword swished just over his hair and Toby landed on his butt. "Get moving!" he shouted. The guard didn't hesitate and bolted out of the room screaming.

Aaron didn't and grabbed one of the poles holding the velvet rope. It was gold-painted but of good metal. He tore off the rope and twirled the pole like a rifle in a marching band. The monster was diverted enough to take its attention off Toby and deal with the shiny pole.

Toby looked towards the rubble. "Aaron, we gotta go!" As he watched, more hands started emerging, each looking just like the monster that Aaron was distracting. This was turning into a bad situation.

"Agreed!" Aaron shouted and the two of them turned and ran out of the room. The monster was confused for a moment, but quickly gave chase. Toby groaned, he was not the most athletic of people.

"Erica, run!" he shouted as they turned a corner and ran into her. Despite her protest, they hauled her along with them and continued down the museum aisle. As they ran, Toby wondered why exactly there seemed to be no one in the place. It seemed empty.

"What did you two do?" Erica, struggling, all but shouted at them.

"Broke something, monster with sword came out, chasing us," said Toby. "All you need to know, now let's move it!"

They ran all the way out of the museum, until at last they wound up in a spot where they could run no more: the docks just outside of the museum.

* * *

_Nani wa doko desuka?_

He emerged after all of the monsters, they had held him down and made it impossible for him to move. But, at last, he had crawled out of the tablet's seal and looked into the world which he had come to.

He was in a room, he knew that much for certain. It was tall and very big, with what appeared to be portable suns installed in the walls. They almost seemed like lanterns but he could not see the flames. At the same time, the glass constructs nearby seemed to be illuminated as well. He looked through the glass, though he was nothing more then a few specs of particles and conscious thought and came to the realization.

The seal, the precious one that he had sacrificed everything to create, had been broken. Someone had shattered the stone tablet and now he was free.

But if he was free, so were the creatures he had sealed up with him…

_Iie… Doushite?_

But no answer came, and the consciousness moved through the rooms of the strange world he found himself, searching for the monsters that had escaped. He knew their scent, he could sense their aura, and it would not take long to find them…

He eventually did. It led him outside and towards a body of water surrounded by metal and stone. He saw three people opposing the monsters, there had to be over two dozen… Two boys and a girl, none of them looked right. Their eyes were too big and their skin was tan like the people of Osaka.

He picked one out, they would be useless on their own. He had to stop them and save them from the monsters, if only he could fight them. He couldn't as a batch of particles and thought, he needed a body.

He selected the one standing in the lead, with a character on his shirt that the consciousness recognized. Maybe he could communicate with the boy after and explain, but for now…

He dove in and invaded the boy's body. His particles meshed with the boy's shape, his consciousness meshed with the boy's. He felt the air around him, and knew he was in control. The spirit opened his new eyes and looked at the world.

The girl standing next to him was shaking him, saying something he didn't understand. No matter, he could explain things as soon as he was finished, but for now he needed to announce himself, and transform.

"_Ore wa Aka, tono-sama no samurai!_"

The two people near him, the boy and the girl, didn't understand him…no matter. He reached for where his sword should have been and announced himself.

"_Samurai no Henshin!_"

He raised his hand and traced through the air his favorite character, four brief strokes with his fingers. His borrowed body exploded with flames, covering him in tight red fabric. His own helmet appeared around his face and covered him in his favorite character, the symbol of fire itself.

He looked himself over, where was his white jacket? His strength? His powers? He seemed to have nothing of what he should have.

He lowered his eyes to his belt and saw his trusty sword…at least that was there. The boy and the girl had backed away, possibly in fear, but probably out of shock at his transformation. He turned to them.

"_Anata wa daijoubu._"

He turned to the monsters. He reached into his belt and pulled forth the basic black disk that attached to the hilt of his sword. It slid in just like old times.

"_Shiitekudasai_."

He charged forward. The monsters did too, but he drew his sword faster. Even with the weaker, less able form he had stolen, he was still quick enough to parry and strike into the first monster that got close enough. It screamed its strange scream and fell dead, crumbling into dust. When he sliced through them, the waters that kept them hydrated expired and they simply broke apart.

"_Ore, Kaeru!_"

He slashed through opponent after opponent, never once missing a strike. No, even after all these years he still remembered the feel of his sword as it ended another monster's life and he relished in it. So what if the curse was lifted? He was free to battle again, after an eternity in stone!

The monsters kept coming… He looked around. Thus far he'd kept them away from the boy and the girl, they seemed to be watching him fight. He wasn't sure why they didn't just run, but he chalked it up to shock. He wasn't sure where he was, but he was sure they didn't have monsters emerge from stone to kill them.

Or the samurai that had once protected the world from such things.

He paused briefly from the fight, just long enough to reach into his belt for yet another disk, this one red in color. He flipped it casually and managed to perfectly slide it onto his hilt, a trick he'd mastered long ago. He raised his sword and spun the disk. Instantly, his sword erupted into fire.

"_Kuru!_"

He slashed through the air, through the fabric of his uniform he could feel the heat that radiated from the sword. It made cutting through the monsters so much simpler and he very quickly made short work of them. In no time at all, the last of them exploded and crumbled into dust.

He grinned underneath the helmet, it was too easy! He sheathed his sword and looked up; the others were approaching him. The boy and the girl were walking warily, as if they thought he might attack them just as easily as he had attacked the monsters.

"_Watashi wa tomodachi_."

They didn't understand him, but he guessed they figured out he wasn't threatening them from the tone of his voice. They started talking again in the words he couldn't understand.

It didn't matter, he'd explain it to them later. He'd bonded to the boy whose body he was borrowing, he could sense the boy's consciousness drifting just beyond his thoughts. He wouldn't be able to control him for much longer. He'd let go for now, and come back later when he'd had some time to figure out what was going on.

He let one last thought linger, just long enough to pass to the boy.

"_Watashi wa Aka. Anata no tomodachi_."

* * *

Toby had the distinct impression that he was tired.

He fell to the ground, quite at a loss for what had just happened. One minute he'd been standing in fear, surrounded by monsters, and the next moment he was lying on the ground, with the monsters gone. His brain suddenly jerked back into full force when his head hit the ground and caused searing pain to blast through him.

"Toby! You okay?"

That was Aaron's voice, he was sure of it. He opened his eyes and saw Erica and Aaron hovering over him. Aaron was helping him up and Erica had a concerned look on her face. He got to his feet and started coughing.

"Man," he muttered, "what just happened? I feel like I just had a three hour workout with a Spartan."

"You feeling okay?" asked Aaron.

He nodded. "I guess, just really sore. Seriously, want to give me a hint? Did I faint or something? Man, it's gonna be bad if someone hears I did that. My rep goes bye-bye." He rubbed his arms, it almost felt like they were sunburned.

"Something…happened," said Erica. She and Aaron exchanged looks, as if unsure of what to let Toby in on.

"Do you remember anything of the last two minutes?" Aaron asked.

Toby shook his head. "Not really. Pretty sure I just blacked out."

"You didn't."

"I didn't?"

Aaron shook his head. "You kinda killed all the bad guys."

"The sushi things?" Toby shook his head, that sounded way too weird. "No way, I'm a lover, not a fighter. Plus, how would I fight off monsters? With spandex and blasters?"

Again, Aaron and Erica exchanged looks. "You really don't remember?" asked Erica.

"Really don't," said Toby.

"You transformed into some kinda superhero thing and fought them off with a sword that caught on fire." Even as the words came out of Aaron's mouth he still wasn't sure he believed it himself.

Neither did Toby. "That makes no sense whatsoever. Where would I get a sword that catches fire. Though…that would explain why I think my hands are sunburned." He clenched them, it still hurt a little. "Did someone have a hallucination?"

"No, I saw it too," said Erica. "You started saying something weird and transformed. I think it was Japanese."

"I don't know Japanese."

"I heard you say 'samurai' Toby," said Aaron. "It was something in Japanese, something weird." He ruffled his short hair and groaned. "None of this is making sense! What's going on, Toby?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Toby asked. "For all I know you guys are just pulling my leg about all this. Come on, we should probably get back to the museum or something. I'm sure the teacher's looking for us and I can't get expelled from another school. Suspended, maybe, but definitely not expelled." He started walking back to the museum, whistling a tune.

A moment later, Erica and Aaron followed suit and joined him. That was when it popped back into his head.

"Hey guys, what's an 'Aka?'"


End file.
